Digital Home Thoughts: Cosina Joins Micro Four Thirds Standard; Announces Nokton 25mm f/0.95 Lens

"Announced jointly by Olympus Imaging Corporation (President Masaharu Okubo) and Panasonic Corporation in 2008, the Micro Four Thirds System standard has rapidly grown in popularity. Now, support for the standard is expanding with the decision of COSINA CO., Ltd to join the Micro Four Thirds System standard. To coincide with this announcement, the company is releasing interchangeable lenses compliant with Micro Four Thirds System standard."

This is a nice announcement. Cosina has been on both scales of the lens manufacturing business, making some absolute cheapies that most photographers will never touch, but have also created great high quality lenses in their Voigtlander line, whom they purchased the rights to the name sometime in 1999. I have their 125mm f/2.5 APO Macro lens in F-mount, and it has been absolutely great to use. Having Cosina onboard the Micro Four Thirds system is great as it means there will be proper wide prime lenses for Micro Four Thirds users; current adaptations means most lenses end up with a 35mm focal length equivalent of 30 to 60mm - hardly wide at all! This Nokton will never have been available at the focal length of 25mm if not for Cosina making the lens dedicated for Micro Four Thirds. DPReview has the links to the official press release of the Cosina announcement and the lens.